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Thursday, January 15, 2015

Everything Dies Baby, That’s a Fact

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL., January 14, 2015-As if the recent losses of good friends are not enough to remind one of his mortality, now the bricks and mortar of our past are falling by the wayside, too.

Atlantic City Race Course, we hardly knew ya’, but the little we did know and experienced, we loved.

It was 30 years ago, life was a bit simpler and the family always would look forward to the drive south in the summertime.

We loved the Jersey Shore then; we still do. We’d spend a week in Margate at the White Sands, right on the beach. On a clear day you could see the Steel Pier a few miles to the north.

As Lou said to Sally in Louis Malle’s 1980 classic: “You should have seen the ocean in those days.”

There were no honky-tonk women in the family and as for casino gambling, table games just don’t do it for me. But night time Thoroughbred racing at Atlantic City always did.

It was at a time when Ken Dunn was making his bones as a successful racetrack executive and Larry Lederman was calling the races; sometimes as Trevor Denman, or as Dave Johnson, sometimes even as himself.

When the microphone went live, you’d never know what to expect.

The arrangements were always the same: Beach by day and Nana baby-sitting by night so that Toni and I could go out for a special dinner, admittedly more of the action variety than the romantic kind.

There was one proviso, however. I would have to take Nana to the races the next night while Toni baby-sat; not quite the same deal as Saratoga where every racing day was take-your-mother-in-law-to-work day.

We always had supper in the trackside dining room, walked down to one of the more quaint walking walks anywhere and spent a race up in the booth visiting with Lederman.

And I must agree with a recent post from Barry Irwin on another site: A.C. had “the best turf course this side of Hialeah.”

The place deteriorated some with the passage of time but it certainly had its share of glamour back in the day; Sinatra, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope--fittingly Bing Crosby’s partner in all those road movies.

You remember Crosby, of course. He was one of the co-founders of “old Del Mar.”

But there was another celebrity link. Atlantic City Race Course was the vision of John Kelly, a mainline Philadelphia businessman who’s fetching daughter Grace eschewed a successful movie star career to run off and marry the handsome Prince of Monaco.

One evening, at the track where night racing was born, Toni rushed back from the Ladies Room nearly out of breath:

“I just saw the Princess in the Ladies Room, she’s even more beautiful than she is on screen.”

Not having a particularly good night at the wickets, I asked: “Did you get her figures?” Classy woman that she is, my wife did not dignify the question, saying only “why don’t you just get the check?”

As most of the HRI faithful know, in recent years A.C. ran a five-day, all-turf race meet so that by mandate it could remain open for simulcasting year-round.

Meadowlands, the first track to receive a simulcast signal from the first track ever to send one, has picked up that gauntlet for New Jersey and recently has conducted all-turf race cards.

Upon hearing the closure announcement, officials representing Monmouth Park have made inquiries about picking up Atlantic City’s days, perhaps buying the track outright. The sides have agreed to talk about it in the future.

But for now it’s enough to know that for Atlantic City Race Course, glory days, well, they have passed it by; glory days, in the wink of an old man’s eye, glory days…glory days.

BETS N PIECES: The life of the late Jack Wilson will be remembered in a video presentation during Saturday night’s Eclipse Awards ceremony. Nothing could be more appropriate than to celebrate the best chart caller ever to grace a racetrack press box. In his original call of the 1973 Belmont Stakes for Daily Racing Form, Wilson named the margin of 31 lengths as Secretariat crossed the finish line. He was always doing things like that; a remarkable talent, a remarkable human being.

By Comparison, Stewards and Racing Rules May Not Be That Bad: Last week, according to several respected gamblers, the Santa Anita stewards did not take a horse down that should have been disqualified. At Gulfstream, the stewards disqualified a horse for a marginal infraction. So which is worse, the disparate rules in various racing jurisdictions or the one that allows for the type of interpretation used by NFL officials in the final minutes of the Packers-Cowboys semi-finals matchup?

If Dez Bryant didn’t take three steps, it was close. If he didn’t make a football play with control and arms outstretched, it was close, although the ruling was not as bad as the one made in the Cowboys favor vs. the Lions the week before. Why doesn’t the ground cause a fumble for a runner but does for a receiver?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: So now we know that first-time gelding date information as reported by the DRF refers to the date on which the data was made available, presumably at time of entry, and not the date the alteration was performed. This, of course, is not helpful at best, misleading at worst. Was the runner an unbeknownst gelding last time out or has he been a gelding for his last three races? Do it right or don’t do it at all.

Drug Classifications and Proposed Rule Changes: Too little and Too Late: The New York Gaming Commission recently proposed a rule that if adopted would result in graduated suspensions for multiple medication violations of 30, 60, 180 days or one year when a violator reaches a certain points threshold based on the classification of drug involved.

This is a good start in that it eliminates capricious and arbitrary nature of fines and suspensions while leveling the punitive playing field. The rule is recommended nationally by the Association of Racing Commissioners International and has the support of the New York Racing Association., the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and the Jockey Club. This gives it a chance to be enacted.

But until and unless the ARCI is held to account for what truly constitutes a Class A, B or C-type drug with a clear delineation between therapeutic medications and cheating drugs, justice will not be best served to either the bettors or the horsemen.

As was mentioned here previously in our commentary regarding the David Cannizzo suspension, how can a painkiller such as Propoxyphene, a.k.a. Darvon, be classified as a Class C drug? Someone needs to explain that to me in words I can understand.

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Jack Wilson: Best At His Job and a Better Person; Eclipse Finalists Announced

HALLANDALE BEACH, January 7, 2015—Long before I fancied myself as “Racing’s Wanna’ Be Savior,” I was a sharp, a wise guy, looking for a gambling edge by any means necessary.

Never mind that I was working for a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper; the sports desk wasn’t going to help me pick or bet on a winner. And the handicapping competition at the other New York tabloids were formidable rivals.

This was back in the day, the glory years of the 1970s when three Triple Crown winners graced America’s racetracks; therapeutic medication had not yet soiled the gene pool.

At the time, not only were there no capital L’s inside a circle on official track programs but past performances didn’t contain even the most basic trainer and jockey win percentages. Short comments in running lines like “no factor” or “up in time” hardly told the story.

If you wanted to know what happened, you were at the mercy of “Trackmen” whose job it is to produce past performance charts with footnote commentary. The only inviolate rule was, no matter how taxing the work circumstances, “there will always be a chart.”

For handicapping research, one either stockpiled old Forms or cut the charts out of the paper and pasted them into accountants’ long day journals which would be swollen six inches thick by the time the racing season ended.

Whenever I mentioned the term Trackman in those earlier days, the name Don Fair of the Daily Racing Form, nee Morning Telegraph, came up immediately.

Then I met Jack Wilson, who leads any discussion when someone asks “who is the best chart caller of all time?”

In over four decades, Jack Wilson not only was the best I ever saw but the best I ever will see. While the trade is still a highly treasured craft to be learned, access to endless television replay technology has helped greatly.

But there’s nothing like a sophisticated set of eyes having knowledge of horses and riders, with excellent handicapping skills, that helps the Trackman provide horseplayers with a hi-tech “picture” of what happened during a particular race.

Race watching is a skilled art. Everyone considers themselves good trip handicappers now that all have access to replays from tracks all over the world. But just as not all Grade 1s are not created equal, neither are trip handicappers.

Not having access to, nor truly believing in the power of speed figures in my early years, I was by definition a trip handicapper. I worked at it and got good at it, as did New York chart call-taker, Paul Cornman of “Sports Eye.” We became good friends.

Paul remains a professional horseplayer and relocated to Las Vegas three decades ago, but I knew he would have wanted to know about Jack Wilson’s passing last week from congestive heart failure.

Upon hearing the news, Cornman said “the Babe was absolutely the best at doing his job and an even better person.” Cornman is a big baseball fan who was fond of using nicknames. And who was better than “the Babe” after all?

“Remember the time we tried to hide that horse from him?” Paul asked.

“I’m not proud to admit this," I said, "but, yes, I do.”

It was an era when you saw something, you said nothing, except to your closest friends, provided you trusted them not to spread the Intel to every “Mush” on the second floor of the clubhouse.

One afternoon Paul and I saw something and we decided to try distracting Wilson at that point of the replay where this one particular horse, call it the #9 horse, either had subtle trouble or the jockey appeared disinterested in the outcome.

So just before the incident I asked Jack “hey, did you see what happened to [another] horse?” “Got it, thanks” Jack said, his eyes never leaving the screen, his pen never leaving his Trackman’s pad upon which he scribbled PP commentary in short-hand.

I can’t remember what I asked but I kept the conversation going until the race was over. As we left to return to our workplaces from the only small screen television in the Aqueduct press box, Jack called out:

“Hey big Johnny, I saw what happened to the 9.” Cornman and I thought we were being so clever. All we got was busted, Jack going out of his way to describe in great detail what happened to “the 9” in his chart footnote.

If you’re a racetracker and you didn’t love Jack Wilson, it’s because you never met the man. Jack never had a bad day or, if he had, he hid it extremely well. Ever cheerful and attracted to his aura, you always wanted to hang with him.

Wilson never smoked, never took a drink, yet he never stopped smiling, befitting man whose vices were consuming copious amounts of ice cream and marshmallow peeps. Oh, but he liked busting chops, but only if he liked you--and Jack liked everybody.

Whenever an inquiry sign was lit and the adjudication process was taking a little longer than usual, people went back to their jobs waiting for the result to become official.

“Uh oh,” Jack would say in a raised voice, with the accent on the first syllable. It made your head snap to attention and look up at the tote board, only to see the objection sign still blinking.

“Gotcha’ again, Big Johnny.”

Alas, Wilson got me, and lots of others, all the time. As stated, he was an equal opportunity kibitzer who just happened to be the best there ever was at his job. How could he not be?

Jack is the son of Dave and Lady Wilson. Based in New England, a racing hotbed in the day, Dave was one of the first of the public handicappers to use speed figures.

And Dave Wilson was so good at his job that one of the local newspapers he worked for printed a special edition of the newspaper during the race meet, using the paper as a wraparound to Wilson’s selection sheet. He would later become known as “King Wilson.”

The King passed before we had a chance to meet, but I did know Jack’s mom, Lady. I can’t remember what the subject was but Lady was never shy about doling out advice--when she was not handicapping and making her own bets.

“If you don’t use it you’ll lose it,” she advised me once. It was the first time I ever heard the expression, certainly not the last, and I've played it over and over in my mind.

Jack Wilson improved the quality of my racetrack life and gave me the best advice I ever received when I was first starting out:

In those pre Self-Automated-Machine days, it seemed like he visited the cashier’s window after every race. Maybe that’s why Paul dubbed him “the Babe.”

Or maybe it was because as racing’s popularity grew, the DRF brought him in to call all the Triple Crown races, and the Breeders’ Cup when it began in ’84. Jack eventually was kicked him upstairs to become the national supervisor of chart callers.

Jack Wilson loved people and he loved his job. Racetrackers everywhere recognized this and they loved him back. Rest In Peace, Trackman.

* * *

Few Surprises Among Eclipse Finalists: Finalists were announced today and, as expected, Bayern, California Chrome and Main Sequence are the three that will vie for Horse of the Year 2014.

The only disappointment was that Art Sherman did not make the final cut as Bob Baffert, Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher were the top three vote getters in the Traner's category. And, so, the man who got the most out of the least, gets no official recognition from those who follow the game daily. Go figure.

* * *

The Honorable Brendan O'Meara: Kudos Brendan for receiving an Honorable mention in the Feature/Commentary Eclipse Award category for your series "When Smarty Jones Shook the Earth" that appeared at HRI.com on Sept. 21, 2014. O'Meara was cited, along with Mary Simon's DRF.com piece "The Story of Old Rosebud, An American Tragedy." Way to go, B.

It goes without saying that we could not be happier for our friend, John Scheinman, who won the 2014 Media Eclipse Award in the Feature/Commentary category for "Memories of a Master: The Determined Life of Dickie Small," a retelling of the remarkable life of late Mid-Atlantic trainer Richard "Dickie" Small, who died of cancer at age 68 in April 2014.

Scheinman's piece appeared on bloodhorse.com, May 12, 2014. Spoiler alert: Before Small saddled all those stakes winners in the Mid-Atlantic and nationally, he served his country as a member of the Special Forces. Needless to say, great story; great read.

Thursday, January 01, 2015

A Happy New Year or Will Racing Tap Out?

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL., January 1, 2015—It is the last day of the year and everyone will start out even--everyone except those who are tethered to this game in both body and soul.

Despite the injustices that hurt every owner, every trainer, every jockey, every backstretch and, of course, the horseplayer, each is all in. This all-consuming exercise requires nothing less.

In a culture that will bet on virtually anything--even illegally, if the proposition is popular enough--it is the horseplayer that society holds in low regard.

For many, the horseplayer is a cliché: He is the guy you meet on a street corner, a racetrack, or even in front of a home computer wearing worn out shoes; with silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants, looking like he probably drinks a bit, too.

But it is the horseplayer who is the most resilient of gamblers: You can ignore him, lie to him, cheat him, steal from him and keep him in the dark. But you can count on him, win or lose, mostly lose, but he keeps coming back for more.

Until he doesn’t.

On both coasts recently, in jurisdictions considered to be the most important in the country, there unfortunately were disparate events that were cut from the cloth of ineptitude, arrogance, indifference or all the preceding.

Normally, these kind stories would make me angry. Instead, all I’m left with is a feeling of sadness.

It is true that hope cannot pay the bills, but hope is the currency on which this game is built, what it will need to survive. Without hope, interest wanes and all is on its way to being lost.

At its best, horse racing provides a sanctuary, an all-consuming antidote for real life syndrome. But there is no escaping reality. Like the poet says, every refuge has its price.

Several stories emerged in the final throes of 2014 that give even the most hopeful horseplayers pause, fearing that all the talk and promises are empty. Change for the better is hopeless, just another sleight of hand.

Today, New York-based trainer David Cannizzo begins serving a 45-day suspension because three horses he trained, two winners and a runner-up, tested positive for Propoxyphene.

As climate-change deniers say, I’m no scientist, but the painkiller best known by its trade name, Darvon, is classified as a Class 3 drug by the Association of Racing Commissioners International.

If a painkiller isn’t a reliable performance enhancer, I shudder to think how harmful Class 2 and Class 1 drugs truly are, whatever the scenario.

Cannizzo has denied any wrongdoing, telling Daily Racing Form that it was “a total contamination type of thing…nothing we did…still trying to figure it out” and the reason he didn’t appeal is because “there are too many big things coming up.”

The trainer originally was suspended 75 days, of which 30 were stayed, and he was fined a total of $6,000, the owners compelled to forfeit purse money by order of the New York Gaming Commission.

Cannizzo, a third generation horseman, is the brother of Jeffrey Cannizzo, the current Executive Director of the New York State Breeders Inc. The optics on this look none too good.

Things are no better on the left coast given the report that Rodenticide, rat poison, is “a possible link” between the seven horses from Bob Baffert’s barn that died within 18 months of Sudden Equine Death Syndrome.

A 2013 investigation concluded that environmental factors were possible links; the barn itself, possibly Hollywood Park’s track surface. A cluster of death in such a short time, from one barn? More bad optics.

Last year, Dr. Rick Arthur of the California Horse Racing Board talked about a possible link to the thyroid medication Thyroxine, whose properties stimulate the consumption of oxygen and increase metabolism.

Overuse in animals results in hyperactivity, excess consumption of water or feed and a faster heart rate. Thyroxine was administered to every horse in Baffert’s barn whether it had thyroid issues or not.

Another use for Thyroxine in a healthy equine, however, is as an EPO antidote, a medication that thickens blood by producing extra red blood cells to ward off fatigue.

But it was the greed displayed by Santa Anita last Sunday which was the most egregious example of the kind of disregard executive bean counters, officials and industry organizations can have for their customers and their sport.

Despite the protestations of a horseplayer activist who contacted the CHRB, stewards, and track executives before the day’s second race, wanting some explanation as to why one particular soon-to-be 6-year-old mare, Seeking Bliss, was allowed to race.

The activist also wondered aloud on his widely circulated industry-contact list why no action was taken by the Jockeys Guild: The response he received was an email from a Guild operative asking that his name be removed from the mailing list.

It never should have reached that point. Prior to Sunday, Seeking Bliss raced seven times. Six times she finished last, losing by an aggregate 239 lengths, 34 lengths per start. The race in which she beat three of 10 rivals, she was 112-1.

In another race, her post time odds were 133-1. The shortest prices in those starts were 33-1 and 37-1. In six of those seven races, she earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 0.

Last Sunday she was last of nine, beaten off after breaking badly and far behind her rivals. She ridden out by her 7-pound apprentice jockey to complete the course “a quarter mile behind the field,” according to the official chart. She was 94-1.

No racetrack, most especially one of the premier winter signals in the world, has any business allowing this type of no-hope money-burner to race. She should not have been allowed to race for her own protection, her rider’s safety and the integrity of the betting pools.

If my colleague Paul Moran were writing this, he might have described Santa Anita’s behavior as being cravenly avaricious.

Worshipping at the altar of bottom line handle must end for this game to survive. If the racing office can’t fill a sufficiently, or find a suitable extra, then run one less race. If this is habitual, shorten the race week.

Tracks run large fields of lower class horses to feed their multi-race race pools, believing that more “spread races” will increase handle and/or create carryovers, catering to a small pool of gamblers and arbitrageurs who command a sizable percentage of handle.

What will they be left with after these market speculators move on to the next big thing?

Low-takeout, high-degree-of-difficult wagers, often promoted with ersatz guaranteed minimums, are a money-suck of rank-and-file horseplayer bankrolls.

Admittedly, carryovers create increased handle, but most every day players are frozen out because of bankroll limitations. Track executives fail to realize that more bettors will jump into horizontal pools when they see a “free square.”

Increasing the number of betting opportunities is another narrow minded approach. Too many betting opportunities; not enough money in individual pools. Not enough money in individual pools; more late-odds drops.

Worse, it kills pool liquidity. Too many bets per card turns off the whales that all bet-takers covet. And worse, still, it hurts every level of bettor who, like the game, must churn to survive. But, I digress.

What makes me dejected on the most hopeful day of the year is that a handful of recent events show a lack of respect for the game’s equine athletes, the sport, and the intelligence of its customers.

Maybe what’s needed here is for horseplayers to stage die-ins in front of every grandstand and clubhouse gate at every major venue

Who knows? Maybe an unconcerned and disinterested mainstream media will be compelled to shine a light on what’s at stake: history; tradition; jobs and a way of life. What depresses most is knowing, through the prism of past performances, that truly meaningful reform will not be coming from within.